My Neighbor Tommy.

When I was a little girl my parents bought this cute, little house & moved us all there in the summer of 1992. We were living in the kind of neighborhood that you don’t really think exists. The kind where the neighbors are friends & you have potlucks at the community swimming pool. Our house was the “Kool-Aid House” as my mom always called it because it was the gathering spot for all the neighborhood kids (with 5 kids, we had something not every family could offer, a kid for every age group.)

There were 6 houses on the street. We had been renting House #3 & they moved us right across the street to House #4. It had a creek in the backyard which has been the Grand Canyon, a hideout for cowboys & Indians, and the burial ground for all our pet fish.

Next door to us lived Tommy. He was a widower with the world’s greatest green thumb. He had this huge backyard with bridges, green houses, dog houses, & a basketball goal. And on his front porch were these beautiful wind chimes that you could hear from anywhere on the street.

The longer we lived there the more Tommy became a family member, like another grandfather. He let us roam in his backyard, he let us stomp on his plants, and swing from his bridges. He let us fish in his part of the creek & shoot hoops on his basketball goal. We treated his backyard like it was our own personal Sandlot.

Most evenings, Tommy would set up one of his fold out chairs & watch us play basketball in our driveway. I remember one time when he looked at my mom and said, “Man, they are getting big.” Until that moment, I never really knew just how much he was paying attention to us all.

Aging started to get the best of him, my mom started cooking him meals in the evening, & all us kids would fight over who got to take him his supper. Eventually, Tommy’s children moved him away to be closer to them because he had gotten to old to live on his own.

A realtor bought his home. She gutted it, but kept some things the same. She put up privacy fences & blocked off the backyard. With those fences came a realization that Tommy was really gone & that a piece of our childhood had left with him.

On the day his son was born (or maybe it was his son’s first birthday) he planted a Cherry Red Oak Tree in his front yard (today, this tree is enormous. I think it would take 3 or 4 people to wrap around it.) At one point, he built a sign & on it he carved the date he planted the tree & what kind it was. Thankfully the realtor never took it down and that helped lessen the sting of him being gone (and frankly, it helped us like this new person who was taking over Tommy’s house.)

Three years ago this month I got a phone call while I was out to dinner with Todd & his father. The phone call said that Tommy had passed away.

To this day, I pull up at my parents’ house, I think of Tommy. I look at his yard and see the sign that sits in front of his tree. I think of all the evenings he sat in his front yard watching us play basketball in our driveway. And sometimes, If I listen closely I can still hear a faint chiming coming from his front porch.

Tommy was awesome! I texted my little sister & told her I wrote about him today & that I cried the entire time I wrote the post. She remembered the exact date he passed away & told me thinks about him too. He was a very special person.

This post touched me since we just lost our neighbor a few weeks ago. We moved into a neighborhood that was mostly older folk. Our next door neighbor didn't have kids so he adopted us. We took care of him and he took care of us.It is so sad watching his sisters rip apart his home and it's going to hurt even more when the new neighbors take over. Those kinds of neighbors can never be replaced.

What a great memory! I think it's so awesome to hold onto pieces like that from your childhood. Those kinds of things make great stories for our own children. So happy to see she didn't mess with that tree. 🙂

When I graduated from High School Tommy gave me a ten dollar bill with a note written on the back of an index card that told me he was proud of me and amazed how I had grown from a little bitty girl into quite a beautiful young lady. Best gift ever 🙂

I used to always get in trouble for playing on his sheds!! And I got in trouble for breaking his concrete wall to get the marbles out of it… and I got in trouble for climbing his tree! Haha I was always getting in trouble over there! Tommy told me if I wanted marbles he would give me some I didn't have to break his wall. He told me not to play on the shed because I would get hurt. And he told me I could climb any of his other trees but this one was special and he didn't want it to get messed up. He died March 27th, 2008, his funeral was March 29th, 2008. I remember feeling like I lost my grandpa.

Oh Kimberly, I'm so sorry to hear that. It was very hard to watch his kids take him away, because they never told him that he wasn't going to be coming back. Then when the new lady moved in it was terrible! Fortunately, she was pretty nice. We were so worried she was going to cut down the trees, but she told us she bought the house for the trees. So that was really nice of her. A part of me likes to think she understood what Tommy meant to us.

How sweet, but sad 🙁 and yet not! What a great memory to cherish always. We lived next to an old lady sort of like Tommy when I was little. She treated us like her grandkids, since she had none. A special lady to me always!

That's so sad, even if it is expected. I loved reading about this and will try not to choke about the fact that when you were little in 1992, I had just graduated from college and was living in Taiwan.

How sweet, but sad 🙁 and yet not! What a great memory to cherish always. We lived next to an old lady sort of like Tommy when I was little. She treated us like her grandkids, since she had none. A special lady to me always!

Oh Kimberly, I'm so sorry to hear that. It was very hard to watch his kids take him away, because they never told him that he wasn't going to be coming back. Then when the new lady moved in it was terrible! Fortunately, she was pretty nice. We were so worried she was going to cut down the trees, but she told us she bought the house for the trees. So that was really nice of her. A part of me likes to think she understood what Tommy meant to us.

I used to always get in trouble for playing on his sheds!! And I got in trouble for breaking his concrete wall to get the marbles out of it… and I got in trouble for climbing his tree! Haha I was always getting in trouble over there! Tommy told me if I wanted marbles he would give me some I didn't have to break his wall. He told me not to play on the shed because I would get hurt. And he told me I could climb any of his other trees but this one was special and he didn't want it to get messed up. He died March 27th, 2008, his funeral was March 29th, 2008. I remember feeling like I lost my grandpa.

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About Kate

Hello, I'm Kate, author behind the blog & matriarch of chaos, meal planning, family entertainment, & everything in between in the Mommy Monologues family.
I started this blog in March of 2010 as a new mom and was looking for an outlet while trying to figure out motherhood. Blogging was great, exciting, new, wonderful & an awesome … [Continue Reading]